Stringer and the Hell-Bound Herd Read online

  As he put his free hand to the latch she gasped, “Don’t leave me here alone, Stuart! I don’t have any weapon to defend myself with!”

  He said, “I noticed. Make sure you bolt this door after me and don’t open up for anyone else, even if they say they have more beer for us. Should you care to dispose of any beer you’ve had so far, you’ll find the seat of yonder built-in settee lifts up for a more utilitarian view of the bay water just below us.”

  She blushed but laughed despite herself. Then he was outside and as he’d expected, surrounded by others milling about in the companionway. None of them seemed too interested in him. He made his way aft to the public men’s room deck passengers were expected to use and got rid of some beer. Then he scouted up that same Filipino, who assured him nobody had been asking about anyone on board, so Stringer found a reasonably quiet corner in the smoking salon and rolled himself a smoke as he studied some on that.

  It worked as well either way. Underpaid help tended to side with the bigger tipper. Meanwhile, he was in a protected position in this corner with his gun already drawn, though covered by the jacket over it in his lap. He smoked down the first one and rolled a second, lest old Echo think he was an easy mark as well. It wasn’t easy. But he made himself hang tough until the steamer cast off before he got back to his feet, took another leak, and headed back to their stateroom.

  From the way the door popped open to his soft knock and gentle whisper he got the distinct impression she’d been wondering where he could have been all this time. As he entered Echo pasted herself to his chest, sobbing, “Oh, Stuart, I was so afraid you’d run off on me!”

  He kicked the door shut and locked it behind him with his free hand as he held his six-gun and jacket in the small of her back, lest she fall away from him as he dryly asked her, “Now why would I want to do a thing like that to such a dead-on-the-level little pal? You have been dead-on-the-level with me, haven’t you, little pal?”

  She lowered her gaze to the front of his blue workshirt as she murmured, “I’ve been thinking about how much I really ought to tell you. They’re apt to think I’ve told you everything whether I tell you anything or not, right?”

  He told her that was how he sure saw it and moved them both over to the fold-down bunk. The infernal contraption had been designed by an unromantic cuss who’d no doubt figured few folk would shack up on a steamer before they knew one another in a more Biblical sense. So the edge of the damned bunk came to the small of her back as he got her over there with the intent of sinking gracefully down atop the bedding with her. Boosting her aboard seemed just a mite premature. So he shoved the gun and jacket out of their way on the mattress, at least, as he said, “They’re not apt to suspicion you at this late date, doll face. If they know you’re still with me they’re about dead certain. They don’t know what a soft touch I am. They’ll have to think we made a deal to keep me from turning you over to the law.”

  She tried, “Pooh, what do you think you had on me to begin with?” To which he replied, pressing closer, “I’m still waiting for you to open up to me. The copper badges would be in a better position to know whether the late Hermes Thurber had a daughter or not. But you don’t want me to pester them about details, you’d rather tell me your own sweet self, right?”

  She began to fumble absently with the waistband of his jeans as he leaned his upper parts against hers, she saying, “I was warned you were sharp, Stuart. Would it make you really cross with little old me if I confessed to just a few teeny weeny fibs when first we met?”

  He kissed her in a brotherly way, lest it slow down the flow of her confessions as he told her, “I’d be really cross if you stuck to that dumb line you tried to feed me when I walked in on you. Who were you working for and what did they expect you to find among the papers in my desk while I was out for the day, if things had gone the way you and your pals planned?”

  She sighed and said, “If I thought they were my pals we wouldn’t be having this conversation. You promise you’ll put me aboard an eastbound train when we get to Sacramento? No side trips to any police station?”

  He kissed her in a less brotherly way and said, “I’m just a nosy newspaperman, not the law. Do I still get to call you Echo Thurber, by the way?”

  She dimpled up at him in the soft gloaming light from the porthole and replied, “I wish you would. I’ll confess I was no relation to that old crook if you’ll just agree to get me back East in one piece, by any name you like.”

  He chuckled fondly and said, “Echo’s a good alias for a gal who repeats herself so much. How come you say One Thumb was a crook and what did the other crooks you were working for think he’d pulled on „em?”

  She murmured, “Damn, you’re really good, or does the law already know Thurber was shaking down certain meat packers, with exposure in your paper as the threat he was holding over them?”

  He answered, truthfully, “This is the first I’ve heard of that notion. He did send for me. So might that mean someone in Butcher Town was calling his bluff?”

  Echo answered, however truthfully, “The, ah, clients I was working for were sort of vague about what he might have on whoever. I thought they were telling the truth about having nothing to do with his death, until I noticed how free they were about lobbing lead about in confined spaces. You sure wear these jeans tight, Stuart. Is that why you don’t bother with a belt?”

  He began to explore her duds down yonder, too, as he told her, “I can see you’re really an eastern gal. Gents raised to dress cow use belts to hold up chaps or guns, not their fool pants. When pants or boots are loose at all they’re way too loose for serious riding. What were you expecting to find in my drawers, I mean my desk drawers, if they didn’t tell you what old One Thumb was offering to sell me and my papers?”

  She replied, “Any notes at all regarding the slaughtering and sale of beef. As you must already know, Hermes Thurber had that one thumb in a lot of meat pies and while I know little or nothing about the business you simply have to read the signs in butcher shop windows to see how expensive it’s getting to eat steak and potatoes every night in San Francisco.”

  He answered, absently, “Yep, but that part’s not mysterious. Did anyone tell you anything about the price of beef where we’re going aboard this tub?”

  She glanced at the porthole, even though there was nothing much to see from this angle but a wisp of peaches and cream cloud adrift in the lavender sky of a California gloaming. She said, “I’d have hardly agreed to elope to Sacramento with anyone if I’d thought anyone who hired such wild-eyed guns might be around. I know they ship beef in by train or riverboat from Sacramento, of course, but…Stuart, are we going to do it right, or standing up like this, for land’s sake?”

  He went on hoisting her skirts as he pointed out it had been her grand notion to unbutton his jeans and added, “We have plenty of time to kill, and this skinny bunk only offers a limited choice of positions. There’s not a thing tying the demise of One Thumb Thurber into other odd notions about beef up the river, where we’re headed. But I want you to study, hard, all the way on whether anyone who might have had it in for old Thurber could have even mentioned a Sacramento beef outfit, doing anything at all, smart or senseless.”

  She started to ask exactly what he meant. But by then he had her skirts up, her underdrawers down, and she protested that what he was doing to her made little sense when they had such a swell place to do things right. So he commenced to undress them both as they went on doing it on their feet, or his feet, at least, once she had her elbows hooked over the edge of the bunk with her now naked thighs locked around his bare waist. Then he boosted her up into the narrow bunk and joined her there to do it some more and damned if she wasn’t right about it being even better, that way.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It would have been awesomely stupid to really fall asleep with a strange woman and a loaded six-gun in bed with him. So Stringer was only playing possum when Echo asked if he was awake and, getting no an
swer, rolled her nude charms over his naked form in the darkness to drop lightly to the rug on her bare feet. Stringer tried to keep an eye on her mysterious activities through slitted eyelids. But the sloshing rumble of the nearby side-paddle covered any mouselike sounds she made, and since the sun had long since set there wasn’t enough light through the porthole to follow every movement of her pale hair and hide. He figured she might use the crap-hole under the lift-up seat of the settee. Then he heard the brassy snap of someone opening leather baggage. She’d come aboard with no more than the little straw handbag that would have matched her straw hat if it had come with fake cherries and silk leaves. His only baggage was, of course, his gladstone bag. It had been locked when he’d set it down there in that corner. He wondered idly where old Echo kept her burglar tools. She certainly hadn’t had them on her person when he’d boosted her up into the bunk.

  He didn’t mind her rummaging about among his spare socks and other possibles, so he just went on playing possum until, sure enough, she found out he didn’t keep his money in such a dumb place and locked the gladstone again to shove it back where she’d found it. But he didn’t find it half as amusing when his keen ears made out the faint jingle of a spur rowel above the rumble and grumble of a steamer in progress. For while he’d meant all along to split the contents of his billfold with such a sport on parting, he didn’t see how she could feel entitled to the emergency funds he kept hidden in the leather lining of that one boot!

  They were still a good ways downstream for a possibly ugly argument over money, so he just went on playing possum as she sure enough used the crapper down there, got herself more dainty at the corner wash stand, and climbed back up with him. As she rolled her naked flesh over his, he automatically stole a friendly feel, which inspired her to grasp him in as friendly a fashion and purr, “Oh, is all this for little old me?” and impale herself on his dawning erection before he was sure he really wanted more, as a matter of fact.

  But it seemed he did, once she had it in her, despite the casual attitude she seemed to have about property and, no doubt, the truth. He didn’t press her further about any connection between the murder of a Butcher Town tough and a herd of beef that seemed headed the other way in any case. The pretty little thing was just too treacherous to treat as a trustworthy pard, so he just treated her like a woman and she screwed him back with the combined delights of a guilty conscience and a naturally warm nature. He figured she had to be faking some of her enthusiasm until she begged for mercy at last and when he rolled off, passed out like a poleaxed heifer to start blowing soft little snore-bubbles at him. When he tried to move her over a mite to make more room for both of them she called him Edward, told him not to be such a silly and rolled over to press most of her good parts against the bulkhead where neither Stringer nor any other silly could get at „em without some argument. So he patted her rump fondly, waited until he was sure she was a more sincere sleeping beauty than a possum, and eased himself the other way to drop lightly to the rug. It only took him a few moments of groping in the dark to find her straw hand bag and softly snap it open. He sat on the crude but efficient crapper, lest anyone ask what he was up to down there, as he found the stuffed silk purse amid all the other debris a female packs in so small a space. He kept his emergency funds in the form of crisp twenty dollar silver certificates, so he paid no mind to limper bills in Echo’s purse. He simply dealt himself the original hundred in the form of five crisp bills and left the rest, including some fresh feeling paper she’d begged, borrowed or stolen somewhere else. Then he put her hand bag back where he’d found it, rolled the five twenties into a sort of neat cigar, and stuffed that in with the Bull Durham sack and other makings in the usual shirt pocket before he got back up into the bunk with Echo. As he did so she stirred in her sleep to murmur, “Can’t you sleep, either, Edward?”

  He whispered back, “I’m worried about that newspaperman. How much do you think he really knows?”

  It didn’t work. She murmured something about letting her worry about that and he knew he’d wake her all the way if he pressed her. So he didn’t. He got up again and stared out the porthole in a vain attempt to see if he could tell just where they might be. That didn’t work, either. The night was clear and the river shone like burnished pewter beneath a waxing moon. But the passing shoreline was no more than a black lace border with an even more distant light here and there to add to the mystery.

  Stringer knew he’d almost surely doze off if he lay slugabed with a bubbling blonde and thunking paddle wheel for company, so he killed some time by washing up and getting dressed again. Then he rolled and lit another smoke. As he’d sort of hoped, the funny noises and sudden flare made Echo sit up and cuss him.

  He said, “I’m sorry, but I just hate to get ambushed on gangplanks. So I’m going out on another patrol before we get there. Make sure you bolt the door after me and I’ll give you a big kiss when I get back.”

  She swore at him some more but laughed and added she might just start without him if he didn’t hurry. He said he’d hold her to that and left, ambling along the deserted gangway with his hat thrown back easy and his jacket once more over his gun hand and drawn six-gun.

  But by the time he got up to the main salon he was commencing to feel a mite overdramatic. The place was almost deserted and none of the late-night drinkers he saw seemed interested in him. He strode over to the bar and thought for a moment he was jawing with the same Filipino. Then he saw the barkeep was an older gent entirely and asked for a beer with an egg in it instead of whether anyone might or might not be gunning for him. The barkeep observed it seemed a mite early for breakfast, but busted an egg into Stringer’s beer schooner anyway. Stringer ordered one of the pepper sausage sticks they had in a jar on the back shelf as well. Between that and the beer-poached egg he was starting to feel more human, or at least less wobble-kneed, by the time the place commenced to get more crowded. He quietly asked how come, and the barkeep told him some passengers always got off at Sacramento. So that was when he first surmised he’d been right about how long he and Echo had been aboard. The steamer, of course, went on up the river as far as Red Bluff, weather permitting. He didn’t want to get into a conversation about the weather. But since one old coot down the bar seemed inspired to go into a tirade about all-summer navigation on the Sacramento if only the Army Corps of Engineers would get off its dead ass, Stringer asked in a general way if anyone had heard anything about that cattle drive over the Sierra Nevada at such a dry time of High Summer.

  Everyone looked at him as if he’d just offered to sell them tickets to Honolulu aboard a flying machine. The old geezer who thought the Corps of Engineers should civilize the Sacramento instead of the infernal Philippines said, “Nobody drives cows over the High Sierra, any damned time of the year, old son.” And another older man chimed in with, “Makes no sense at all. Beef prices are up and freight rates are down since Frank Norris writ that expose of the railroad barons and got our Teddy Roosevelt so interested. Why would anyone want to trail cows in off the Nevada range when they can get here so much fatter, cheaper?”

  Stringer knew the reaction he’d get if he told them the herd they were talking about seemed to be aimed even dumber. So, seeing none of them seemed to know anything about it, he just shrugged it off and drank some more early breakfast until some of the passengers due to get off at Sacramento started drifting out on deck. He left some coins on the mahogany and drifted after them to head back to Echo and warn her to get dressed, lest she wind up in Red Bank instead. There were way more folk out on deck than he’d seen back in the main salon. He made his way through the growing crowd, rapped harder than before on the stateroom door and, when that didn’t work, tried the latch and discovered the door was unlocked.

  He stepped in, cussing under his breath, and groped for the switch that turned on overhead Edison bulbs as he tossed in, “Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty. We’re closer to Sacramento than I figured, unless all those other folk are nervous nellies
indeed!”

  But as he switched on the lights he saw he was alone in the compact stateroom. He’d have suspected he might have made a mistake about the door number if he hadn’t spied his empty gunrig and packed gladstone right where he’d left them. There wasn’t so much as an artificial cherry left to indicate a pretty gal in an ugly hat might have ever been in there at all.

  He stepped all the way inside and shut the door with a fatalistic shrug. California’s bigger cities had gotten sort of sissy about sidearms since the war with Spain, but this far inland they were closer to the kind of country Stringer had grown up in. So he strapped his gunrig sensibly around his lean horseman’s hips and put his S&W in its holster to ride properly. Then he put his jacket on, fixed his Stetson brim to ride more serious and picked up his gladstone with a last look around to make sure he hadn’t overlooked anything.

  When he saw he hadn’t he let himself out, toting the bag in his left hand, to scout for old Echo lest she need the services of his gunhand, getting ashore.

  But, as in that kid’s poem about the goblins and the little boy who wouldn’t say his prayers, she wasn’t there at all. Or, if she was anywhere on board it had to be some place he couldn’t think of or couldn’t get to. There was more than one doorway marked “Ladies” fore and aft. When a petite brunette popped out of one near the gangway on the port side Stringer was tempted to ask her if she’d noticed a somewhat larger blonde skulking about in the ladies’ shithouse, but he didn’t. He noticed neither passengers nor crew near the fool gangway and had to cut through in the starboard deck to confirm that no matter how they might do it in a Jack London novel they got off the Sacramento Steamer from the starboard side when it sidled into Sacramento aimed upstream. He supposed it had to even out as they went downstream the other way. But whichever way they meant to let folk off at Sacramento any damned minute, Echo was nowhere in sight.